The State IT Agency (SITA) is considering “extraordinary measures” in an attempt to address industry concerns around one of its tenders.
The tender in question is RFB 882/2011, which calls for bespoke development of the outstanding software modules of National Treasury's Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS). These modules are the core financial system, inventory management system, payroll system, and data exchange system.
An investigation featured in the 21 September issue of ITWeb's iWeekmagazine calls into question the requirements of the tender. The scope of each tender module requires the bidder to provide project management services; full bespoke development of the relevant system and configuration of lead site, the copyright and intellectual property of which will remain with SITA; test support services; software maintenance and support for a period of five years; and a skills transfer programme.
The successful bidders for the first three modules will have nine months to have the application ready for a live installation, while the data exchange system winner will have seven months.
Last week, SITA notified those who attended its 25 August compulsory briefing that it would hold a three-hour clarification session on the tender. Few industry players were able to recall the agency holding a clarification session, or an additional briefing of any type on a previous occasion.
Less work
The clarification session, which took place on Friday, focused on outlining work that had already been done on each of the modules, as well as revealing requirements that would not form part of the initial development timeframe.
Vernon John, SITA's IFMS product manager, explained that while the four-part tender calls for bespoke development, it is not a greenfield environment. “We've already done a lot of the work that makes up the early stages of a development project. The IFMS architecture and user requirements are already documented and many of the common components that stretch across all of the applications are developed and ready to be deployed in the remaining modules.”
Although the successful bidders will still be expected to have readied the lead site configuration within the initial development period, the user acceptance testing - which is often a lengthy process - will not form part of the first deadline.
Despite John's assurances that much of the work had already been completed, detailed presentations on each of the four modules revealed differing levels of readiness. The inventory module is most prepared with the user case, concept of operations (con-ops), business service specification and application service specification completed. The payroll module has completed con-ops, but has only made 30% progress into the business service and application service specifications. The financial management module is similarly placed; however, the extent of the progress on the service specifications was not quantified. The least work has been done in the data exchange environment, SITA said.
Closing the presentation, SITA executive Nagalin Tuganadar warned attendees: “SITA does not have deep pockets and neither does government. We're looking for bidders that will be strategic to government; prepared to embark on risk-sharing and partnerships with government. We'll be looking to see how much you will invest in government.”
Industry players remained unmoved, however; calling for additional documentation into required functionality, extended development timelines and another extension on the submission date for bids. Few players responded positively to a call from one attendee for a show of hands from those who felt the project was feasible.
The SITA team appeared amenable to sharing additional documentation and extending the submission deadline by a further two weeks to the middle of October. This will be the tender's third submission extension from the original deadline of 12 September.
The initial development timeframes of nine and seven months will not be extended, the team declared.
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